Florence Hotels
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Renaisance city
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We trained our way out of Venice to Florence, city of great art and the main location of the Renaisance. We arrived late, tired, so took a cab to our nearby guesthouse. We spent a day catching up and planning the remaining days.. something I hadn't done enough of before Venice... and explored the river, parks, and squares of Florence. Unfortunately the main museums were so crowded, and required a few hours wait, that we did not try to see the original David or the other masterpieces in Florence. But fortunately there was plenty of impressive outdoor sculpture (two copies of David and other impressive works) and the city itself still seemed like it could have been hundreds of years ago.
Looking back (yes I'm catching up on this) I've realized that we didn't see a lot of the typical sites- I have been used to traveling alone, going to every museum and site I was interested in, catching quick meals as needed, rushing around trying to see everything- but with someone else this becomes a bit more difficult, and more time is spent just walking, enjoying meals, buying snacks, and hanging out than I had been. A different way of traveling and definitely less lonely!
The first day, as we were looking for lunch well after the allowable lunch hour (oops again) we came across a Senegalese restaurant. The owner was nice enough to let us try the unfamiliar dishes before choosing, and we had a great lunch of ravioli and two types of dishes with rice and cous-cous. It was great to find a place to eat that was still open and a very nice owner who was very helpful- and luckily he spoke French. In fact with English, French, and Spanish- which is very similar to Italian, since every word I attempted was almost always understood (even though a lady in the Venice hospital denied that the languages were similar, sorry but they are)- it was even easier to get around and find a way to communicate with people.
We saw a quick but slightly disappointing show at the science museum called Galileo's Telescope- although it didn't have his actual telescope it did go into detail on the development of telescopes, how Galileo was able to see Jupiter's moons, why he was confused about Saturn's shape, and how he proved the existence of sunspots. It was impressive to learn what he could discover with the limited telescope capabilities of the time. Unfortunately the rest of the museum was undergoing renovation so there wasn't much to see there.
Florence was also very crowded in the main area, but the city does a great job of putting fantastic sculpture on display in public areas. I didn't bother to buy an overpriced guide to the city, but we had good advice from the guesthouse owner, which we tried to follow but didn't get through too much of it. A good reason to go back and really make an effort to see the artwork- it would be cool to see works such as David in person, but I'm not sure it is worth waiting hours and hours, since I am sure I wouldn't be able to linger and examine such popular works as much as I would like to. Much more fun to find ones that appeal to me personally and have all the time I want to look at them.
Since this was the last city where I encountered many.. I will write some about U.S. tourists in general. I don't want to be too critical so I will say this as a guide on how not to mark yourself as an obvious U.S. tourist. I will say that even though our country isn't very popular right now, at no time did I say I was from somewhere else (Canadian for example) and never had a problem with anyone. People were always friendly with me but would admit they do not like our country's policies. I also never had to lie about my last job and what I had done for a living- other than one instance never had much of a problem with that either. So here we go:
How not to be a disgustingly obvious U.S. tourist:
1. Shhhhh... quit talking and laughing so loudly. Especially when someone doesn't understand English- speaking louder won't help.
2. Leave the current fashions at home. Especially if you are female and Britney Spears' fashion sense is an inspiration to you.
3. Don't constantly chew gum loudly and with your mouth open.
4. Try to expand your culinary tastes and don't jump from McDonald's to KFC to Pizza Hut. These places may be crowded, and McDonald's may have a local variation, but they aren't really that different.
5. Go easy on wearing the flag everywhere. Although the worst offender I saw was an Australian in Thailand.
6. Don't get over-annoyed over different standards of service, how small things are, how close people get to you.
7. Try and learn a few phrases of the local language. Always very helpful.
That's all I can think of for now.
Books: Chirstine by Stephen King. Good read- not one of his best, but still a page turner.
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